


i'm broken in my faith

by okaytlyn



Series: jisoos christ!! [2]
Category: Lovelyz, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Attempt at Humor, F/M, Humor, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-12 00:52:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5647912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaytlyn/pseuds/okaytlyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>once upon a time, they were in the church choir, singing their hearts out in praise to the Lord.<br/>twice upon a time, seo jisoo meets joshua in college theology class, and he avoids her like his life depended on it.<br/>thrice upon a time, she finds him knocked out drunk after making out at one of those frat parties, bloodied against the toilet door.<br/>she rescues him of course. she's a good samaritan, the fucking best. she unfortunately doesn't anticipate what happens in the subsequent future.</p><p>[that 2jisoo religious!crisis/self-discovery(?) au that nobody asked for]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so like if you're vry opposed against religion/atheist feel free to back up and leave and exit! please don't worry. it's light-hearted at the start?? i guess? and no its not exactly good girl turns bad boy good because seo jisoo is a foxy sunshine stocked up with dirty humor and joshua actually is a sap. maybe. jesus loves you and hopefully jesus will cleanse this sin of a fic.
> 
>  
> 
> anyway enjoy???!?!??!?!?!!??!?! it's unbeta-ed, written by that loser that keeps posting 2jisoo????? ily all
> 
> title from FT.Island's Pray

 

  
the first time seo jisoo meets hong jisoo, is the first time she comes to church, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. they're eleven. he's the son of one of the pastors, and the most intelligent one in their Sunday school class. 

she remembers the warm environment, she remembers standing in front of the other kids and bowing, and she remember them laughing because she had the same name as him.  

she remembers the start of a second home.

 

 

she sees him in worship sessions, in choir practices, in youth conferences, and while they're never been close, they're at least aware of each other's presence. 

 

 

 

when she turns nineteen, she gets an acceptance letter for Seoul National University, and it's just about then she realizes that she hasn't seen hong jisoo in church for quite a while.  _people get busy though,_   she thinks, and doesn't think about it again until the first day of uni.

 

 

 

 

 

Cognitive Science is an extremely demanding major, and she already feels the heat from the very first lecture. Jisoo gets to her next lesson early, slumping down on the plastic chair and basking in the air-conditioned lecture hall. And don't get it wrong; Seo Jisoo loves Jesus, and she loves discussing about religious and psychological studies, but the moment she sees the professor's skeptical face when he enters the class, she knows for a fact that she's going to  _hate_  Theology 101.

 

Somebody stumbles in ten minutes after lecture begins. Admittedly, it doesn't look as embarrassing as it would if  _she_  were to stumble in late, but the guy has goddamn amber hair and the bone structure of a Greek god. He shoot the professor a winning smile, and its a whole two minutes after he's settled into a seat at the back that she realises he's Hong Jisoo. 

_What._

Later on, after running through the syllabus material roughly, the Professor turns to the class and clears his throat.

"Now, class, I have to ask you all one very fundamental question. Because if we get over this, then the rest of our lessons would be smooth-sailing. So," Mr Kwon pans the hall with a slow turn of his head, "Is there any deep-rooted, delusional soul here that believes in Jesus Christ?"

The class bursts out laughing. _Great_. She puts up her hand anyway. About three others do so as well, and she's thankful. 

"Well, ancient history says he's been dead for two-thousand years. So if you guys have any claim, or reason why you would still do so, you're free to tell us right now. If not, keep a mind free of religious beliefs for future lessons, as we need a clear, un-biased perspective for further lessons."

_God, help this man._  Jisoo sighs into her hands and regrets this course with every fibre of her being.

"So, no arguments?"

 

Jisoo looks back up to Hong Jisoo that sits two rows behind her. She means to ask him to help answer, like he had always had in church during youth bible study lessons.

To her utter shock, he doesn't even have his hand raised. He sits back in his seat, eyebrows knitted as he talks to the guy next to him about stuff unrelated to the crucial discussion at hand.

 

Suddenly, their eyes meet.

 

Jisoo doesn't even realise she's glaring, and the other Jisoo gives her a  _what-did-i-even-do.jpg_  face. Her features soften, and settles for an uncertain mini-wave.

 

Hong Jisoo stares at her with bewilderment, and she almost can hear the wheels turning in head as his face washes over with recognition. And turns to surprise, and fear as he whips his head around, looking away.

"Alrighty then, we can proceed-" Mr Kwon's cheery voice jolts her out of her reverie, and Seo Jisoo knows she has to do something about this. She can't just keep quiet.

"Hi uh, excuse me! Hi I'm Jisoo and uh, regarding the question you posed earlier, sir. I would like to say that i very much believe that Jesus died for our sins and is alive in us, however i would never push my religion onto anyone else and i would very much like to keep loving the Lord. Haha. Thank you?" she interrupts, and rambles, and then sits back down in embarrassment the moment she finishes talking.

 

He raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

"But are you sure you'll be able to keep religion out of your studies? And give me reasonable essays?"

"I will... try my best," she answers meekly. 

"Fine, Miss, uh Jisoo, i don't own you, or your unfortunate mind. But i do expect a grade of at least 85% this term."

Her cheeks are burning. She doesn't know what to say, so she just bows to the professor. 

 

 

 

After lecture ends, she tries to find the other Jisoo, only to see that there's at least two girls that are asking for his number.

_Alright. I'll wait._

She wonders if he backslided. Maybe he fell out of religion, she knows friends who went through that. It just that, she had never expected Hong Jisoo of all people to do so. But everyone has their own story, so it's not really up to her to judge him just because he's the son of the Youth pastor in church.

 

When the girls clear away, he turns to look at her face and starts packing his stuff.

"You're Hong Jisoo right?" she probes.

"I," his cheeks burn and his voice gets soft. "I go by Joshua now."

There's a group of extremely good-looking friends waiting for him, that lean against the wall in their Aeropostale ensemble and coloured hair. They burst out laughing at Ji- well, Joshua's display of awkwardness. 

"Haven't seen you around church for quite a while," she comments, and picks up his fallen stationery when he topples his pencil case in a rush.

 ".... yeah. Thanks, i gotta go!"

 

 

 

In a blink of an eye, Joshua is gone. He stumbles out with the rowdy gang of guys, stumbling out of the hall like the way he stumbled in - like he has his shit together perfectly.

 

 

 

 

 

 Joshua Hong definitely doesn't have his shit together. His life is a nice, little mess of over-popular friends, getting drunk and laid, and scraping through classes. But it's okay.

 

"Bro, what the hell! You're Joshua-smooth-criminal-Hong right? Did you just  _stutter?_  In front of that girl?" Mingyu laughs. It's more of a bark. He looks like a deranged puppy, but it gets the girls on campus swooning anyway. Kim Mingyu is the resident hot guy on college grounds. The title's almost official.

"She's just an old... schoolmate," he manages, trying his best to make it sound like an off-handed comment.

"She's pretty, her eyes are cute," Seungcheol says, in a sort of endeared manner. "She's got spunk, that little Christian girl."

Junhui wrinkles his nose. "Hyung, you're gross, but yeah she's fuckable, at least."

Jeonghan hits Jun on the shoulders, shushing him as they pass by his microbial biology professor. "God, Junhui. To you, girls are just distinguished by their level of like, fuckability. You're fucking superficial, you know?"

"And  _you're_  not? Lay off the crack, i'm pretty sure Wonwoo hasn't dealt out your share this week, Jeonghan. You're always going on about how random people look aesthetically pleasing, for God's sake. I bet i'll find you tonight in Seungcheol hyung's house party in the middle of anal sex with some girl who had such symmetrical ass cheeks that you thought it was goddamn  _aesthetic._ "

 

They laugh it off anyway. Junhui's just being extra savage today.

 

Joshua's since gotten used to his newfound uni friends shit-talking, sexualizing the female body and all. Even though they use the word God for mostly unorthodox purposes. They talk, he listens. He just hopes they forget about Seo Jisoo, because they're _wild,_  and they don't really have the polite habit of shutting up. If Jisoo finds out about his current lifestyle... he'd be thoroughly fucked. And if she tells any of his bros about his past lifestyle, he'd be fucked too. Double penetration, in a metaphorical sense.

In essence, no one on campus knows that Joshua Hong is the son of a pastor. Which honestly isn't a big deal, but when you've grown up with that title, with invisible expectations of exemplary behavior and with eyes watching, waiting for you to screw-up just a little, in a little town that knows everything about you, yeah, the new, raw freedom is phenomenal. Him going to Seoul National University was his shot at a clean slate - that he couldn't wait to dirty. Right now, everything's pretty fucking dandy - he's swearing openly, he's getting laid every week, and he's popular for all the wrong reasons. And it's all thanks to his gang of dashing manwhores that this campus adores. 

 

Joshua Hong knows he'll regret it in the future, probably. But everything's new, and everything comes in a rush, but when you're a twenty year old guy that just lost his virginity to some unknown girl at a bar party last week, adrenaline is the thing that you fucking  _breathe_. 

 

Life's confusing, sinful, and great. For a moment, he wonders if his life right now looks like the one the Prodigal Son in the Bible led - before he legit screwed-up and ran out of cash to blow.  _It probably does._ He doesn't want to think about God now. And the moment he sees Seo Jisoo's face he's reminded that his conscience is tugging at his sleeves. When she smiles, it literally guilt-trips him into confusion, and possible repentance. He's having the time of his life now; ain't nobody got time for that. 

 

 

 

 

And so Joshua makes a decision to avoid her as much as possible for extremely integral reasons like, you know, damage control. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> months pass, and joshua thinks he's got the hiding-from-jisoo formula down in his muscle memory. until his gang interrogates him about it, and then he screws-up entirely.
> 
> jisoo makes friends with the enemy. who's actually just fluffy choi seungcheol that doesn't really have bad intentions and maybe his very questionable friends, but through them she discovers that joshua's already become somebody else.
> 
>  
> 
> (pretty lighthearted + longer chapter)

In Jisoo's geophysics class, there's a slacker that always sits next to her. And even though he's always borrowed her notes, she can't find it in herself to be mad because it's her floorball captain, Choi Seungcheol. Who generally, and genuinely likes cute, kind and small things, despite being the ringleader of Adorable Assholes - Mingyu, Wonwoo, Junhui, Jeonghan, Joshua and himself; and sometimes, Myungeun. And she's quoting him word for word.

 

"Why'd you call them Adorable Assholes?"

Seungcheol smiles lazily, stretching his legs out onto the empty chair in front of him. The professor gives him a dirty look. "Because they are. We're fucked up, and I'll admit it."

Aside from hanging out with Seungcheol, she's never really talked to any of them. Especially Joshua. Heck, even Junhui hit on her once, and Joshua's still not-so-secretly avoiding her. It's been months, but Jisoo's only picked up and pieced together an impression from hearsay.

"I don't get it. Are you guys like the F4 of SNU?"

He laughs. It's a hollow chuckle, that's almost sheepish. "Except we aren't flower boys. You don't go out much, do you, Jisoo?"

"Not really. I'm always practicing, Cap. You're the reason i'm trapped in the floorball court on Friday nights."

"You're pretty good already. Just not better than me," Seungcheol teases, and Jisoo threatens to cut the supply of theology  _and_  geophysics notes. 

 

"I don't know why, but Jisoo you're like, pure?" Seungcheol muses as they're wrapping up the lecture. "And i think it's a good thing that you don't keep up with gossip."

"Me? Pure?" she laughs. Of all people, she doesn't expect rich public relation expert, borderline bad-boy Seungcheol to say it. "I mean, juicy gossip is always great, you know? I just don't have time. I'm a sinner in the eyes of Jesus anyway. We're all horrible."

"Nah, you're good. By the way, how do you know Josh?"

If Joshua doesn't want anything to do with her, it's probably for a reason. "Uh, just an acquaintance from long ago. Almost forgot his face," she says, like it's nothing. She's not selling him out because she cares, but because it's not really her business to do so.

"Really?" he marvels. "Because while i suck at reading, i don't suck at reading people. And he gets literally spooked every time he sees you. And Joshua's the kind of guy who'd sweet-talk the most intimidating disciple faculty head into compliance."

"He...is?"

 

"Yeah, i'm just as puzzled. Why would anyone be scared of weak puppy Seo Jisoo?"

She glares. It doesn't work on Seungcheol probably because he's an actual German Shepherd puppy. That's what he is.

"So you don't know why he avoids me either?"

"Nope. It's weird. Remember the first theology lecture, and you talked to him? He was so  _scared_  and shy and if i didn't laugh i'd feel alarmed."

Myungeun joins them outside when lecture ends. She's her high school friend, and she's simultaneously in Seungcheol's Adorable Assholes clique.

"Maybe he likes you, " Myungeun suggests jokingly.

"Who?" Seungcheol pipes. "Joshua? Nah. He's like the lowkey version of Mingyu, but instead of breaking hearts he's just there for the casual sex, you know?"

Jisoo's eyes widen. "Really?"

Myungeun chuckles and shakes her head. "You didn't know?"

 

Jisoo strains a smile.

"I guess I'm learning."

 

They find Wonwoo, Jeonghan, Jun  and Joshua at the cafeteria. Mingyu's a few tables away, chatting with hot female seniors. Joshua's smile dies on his lips when he sees Jisoo with Seungcheol and Myungeun, his whole face paling.

God, what did Jisoo ever do to him to warrant such a reaction.

Joshua excuses himself to the bathroom discreetly, except it isn't when Jeonghan calls after him, "YOU'RE PULLING THIS AGAIN, GOD."

"Sorry, Joshua always pulls this shit when he sees you around," Seungcheol explains. 

"Yeah, i notice."

 

Junhui's eyes light up."Seungcheol, you brought this chick here?"

"He's my floorball Cap'."

"Oh really? You're really cute, i thought Seungcheol would have banged you already."

"This isn't really the time, Junhui," Myungeun chides. Wonwoo has a hand slung over her, smirking in amusement at the situation. "Jisoo isn't really that type."

Jeonghan nods in agreement. "How could you torment her on her first meeting? Although, yeah Jisoo you have nice legs."

"Except it isn't our first meeting. Remember when we met at Mijoo's dance recital? You were hot that day too-"

Jisoo, meanwhile, blanches. She feels her skin crawling, cheeks burning, and it's pretty unsettling. Joshua Hong is still missing in action.

Seungcheol looks on worryingly. "I think you should go now," he whispers into her ear. "Mijoo and Jiyeon are calling you over to eat lunch over there."

She shoots him an appreciative smile and darts away after patting him on the back as a thank-you gesture. 

 

_Alrighty then. That was gross._

Joshua walks back to the cafeteria only to hear Junhui hitting on Jisoo, and Seungcheol-hyung breathing down (?Kissing? Talking to?) Jisoo's neck.

_Holy shit, since when were they close?_

Jisoo disappears to the corner of the cafeteria when he makes his way to the table. "What did you guys talk to her about?" he asks warily.

"Stuff. She's not so bad. Why do you always run away when she's around?" Jeonghan asks as he spoon-feeds Joshua with samgyetang.

"I don't!"

"You totally do," Seungcheol laughs.  _Shit._  


"I just. I don't like her, alright?" he grits.  _Let's keep things casual, oh my god._  


"Or maybe, you actually  _like_  her," Wonwoo tries.

Myungeun high-fives him, doubling over with laughter. "That's what i said just now, holy shit."

Wonwoo smiles smugly, "Great minds think alike." Wonwoo's eyes linger over Myungeun's for just a little longer than he should.

"I swear, i don't like her. She rubs me the wrong way."

"So you want her to rub you the right way?" Junhui says. "Like, uh, up and down? On which part?"

 

Joshua would usually laugh when Junhui attempts at crude humor. But it's cute, church-going Jisoo they're talking about, who has enough blackmail material to ruin him if he could. "Stop, Jun. It's disgusting."

 

Mingyu returns to the table, unimpressed. "Is Joshua PMS-ing?"

"He's doing it again. He says he hates Seo Jisoo."

"I just can't stand being around her, guys. It's not a big deal."

"Oh, that girl from your theology class? She's harmless. Why would you hate her? Did she betray you in the past?" Mingyu asks.

"Yeah," Seungcheol says. "There has to be a reason why you're so hostile towards a little girl who said she loved God in the middle of lecture."

"Because, she's..." he huffs, ignoring Jeonghan's withering stare and desperately trying to find a believable excuse, "Because she's a religious  _snob! She shoves her religion into everybody's fucking noses!"_  


God. The silence in the air's palpable.

  
_Did i just say that?_  It's incredibly low, even for him.  _Maybe i was a little too loud._ Suddenly, the sound of a bowl and tray dropping to the floor shocks him and causes Joshua to turn around.

"Oh, haha. I'm so careless, it's a good thing the bowl's empty!" the girl laughs awkwardly as she picks up the utensils.

_holy shit, its jisoo, oh shit, oh shit_

"Sorry guys. I was probably too pre-occupied thinking about  _Jesus_ and how he cleanses our  _unforgivable sins,"_  She says, looking at Joshua pointedly for a short but meaningful second, before bringing the tray back to the return area and walks away.

 

Myungeun shakes her head.

"A+ asshole behaviour, bro," Junhui sighs, and Joshua tries not to feel the guilt creeping into his veins.

"And you're not?" He shoots back pettily. He glares at him - like it would help.

 

Wonwoo stands up abruptly. "You know what, i'm going to drop by the pharmacy for a while."

"Why?"

"To get Advil for Joshua's period cramps and a box of tampons to stick up his ass."

"Holy shit," Seungcheol breathes. "Wonwoo went hard."

"I asked him to. Jisoo doesn't push Christianity when you don't want it. I don't really understand why you had to say that," Myungeun says.

Joshua is silent.

 

 

"Moving on. Myungeun do you have the stock of beer ready for tonight?" Jeonghan attempts at changing the topic.

"Yeah, the Carlsberg should be delievered to your holiday complex by this afternoon. 48 litres of Holsten, 30 litres of Saku Dlight Pomegranate, and the rest is classic Carlsberg Elephant," Myungeun immediately transitions to her businesswoman mode, but quickly switches back. "Hey, do you think i should drag Jisoo to the party tonight?"

"Just to spike Joshua?" Mingyu says, "Yes, Amen. Hell yes."

"But she won't want to go," Joshua quickly says. 

"How do  _you_  know?"

"She'll be too uncomfortable, all the sex and sin and like Wonwoo's druglord shit...."

Seungcheol raises his eyebrows. "Now you're concerned for her? Child, make up your fucking mind."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Joshua's circle of friends, there is the pimp Mingyu, Jeonghan the art student with a cult following, Junhui, the dirty talker, Seungcheol, their well, father, and Wonwoo the mysterious guy that secretly deals LSD. And then, you have Myungeun.

 

This is the thing. Joshua is scared of Myungeun. He's pretty sure the rest of the guys are intimidated by her to a certain extent. Except for maybe Wonwoo. With her short bob and resting bitch face, and taekwondo skills that could make any bastard cry in five seconds, she's something else. Park Myungeun, on top of that, is the daughter of parents are the Korean distributors for Carlsberg. Somehow, she'd hung out with drug dealer boy Wonwoo and his family ever since they were seventeen, and here they are. Of course, she's a genuinely nice person, and she gets them free beers and all. She's also pretty hot, but he's pretty sure too, if any of them messed with her, Wonwoo would kill them. That is, if she didn't kill the person first.

 

"Bro," Myungeun nudges, "At least fucking pay attention to this part. He's gonna test this tomorrow."

They're two hours into a medicinal chem lecture, three months into college, and Joshua's very sure he's thoroughly fucked. 

"I'm not going to pass anyway," he groans. He doesn't understand how Myungeun aces her classes even after hanging out and surviving his clique, and after working part-time at the Carlsberg firm on special occasions. Myungeun is the probable definition of  _alpha female._  


"Well you better fucking pass. You got here on a semi-scholarship, and this is the subject you major in, Joshua Hong."

 

Her words sound pretty scary, so he picks up his pen and writes pitiful-looking notes into his very blank notebook. Myungeun isn't talking about his awful stint at the cafeteria from before but he feels like shit anyway.

 

Nobody has to know that he failed the last mid-term, and the one before. Nobody needs to know that with every failure, his heart aches with a dull thud, that he's given up in believing in anything at all. Nobody has to know that the trainwreck called Joshua Hong actually misses home. 

 

But he'll be emo for a while, and it'll all go away with a little drinking, right? Life is supposed to be fun and shit, not full of regrets. Maybe a little of shitty, meaningless sex would help too. Joshua knows shit is serious. He's gotten two warning letters from the school board to signify that he's in dangerous territory with his performance. In studies, of course. His performance is bed was something else altogether. 

 

Once upon a time, he'd ask God for help at once. He'd set himself down and just,  _voila,_ begin studying. That was him when he was nineteen. Now he's twenty with zero sense of motivation and-

 

He hates thinking like this. He's somebody else now. Tonight, he'll forget it all. He'll lose himself in Jeonghan's party, he'll have fun. It doesn't matter if it's temporary. Alcohol makes everything better. 

 

(Drugs however, do not. The shit Wonwoo deals sound revolting, or maybe because he's a (albeit failing) medicinal chem major that he knows there's bad shit in those. He's never touched them, thank the Lord.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

At around six fourty-five in the evening Myungeun and Mijoo burst into Jisoo's dorm room.

"HERMITTTTTTT!" They scream. 

Jisoo is thoroughly offended. "What kind of blasphemy is this?"

"You're always studying in your room or on your own, practicing floorball drills.  _Yer a hermit, Jisoo._ " Myungeun proclaims.

"Lies. I'm learning my choir parts for this Sunday's service."

"Same difference."

 

"...Alright," Jisoo surrenders. "What do y'all want."

 

"So there's a party at Jeonghan's holiday complex," Mijoo states. 

"I'm very much aware, yes."

"And you have to come."

"I don't."

"We just got our results for the last test, Jisoo. You did well, now you gotta rewind, you know?"

Parties aren't her thing.

"Come on Jisoo. Remember the shit Joshua said about your during lunch? It's your chance to sweep him off his high horse," Mijoo says.

"Besides, I'll be busy the whole time. Mijoo's going to get lonely."

"She'll be fine. Besides, I don't like drinking shitty Korean beer," Jisoo says. "I don't want to _shove my religion down anyone's nose_ , you know? You guys go have fun."

 

"Except the beer will be fucking exceptional. And European." Myungeun says with her hands on her hips, ransacking her wardrobe. "Don't do this, Jisoo, we've gone to Jiae's 21st together. It's not your first time. You're crazily fun. You know how to keep to yourself. And now you'll show Josh that you aren't a stuck-up religious prude."

  
_But i_ am _a religious prude, sadly._ Jisoo thinks.  _Don't know about being stuck up though._ But Mijoo and Myungeun unfortunately don't care, shoving her a random dress and pushing her into the toilet, locking the door behind her.

"YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES, GO CHANGE."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> joshua does a whole lot of things he's bound to regret in one night. jisoo witnesses it all - except for one.
> 
> long chapter + kinda gross LMAO

On somedays, Joshua hates his alcohol tolerance. His gut isn't strong but his mind stays sober. He's two bottles and twenty-one shots in, and while his stomach is starting to feel funny, he's so awake and sensitive in the mind that it's become a point of frustration.

 

He spots Jisoo in one of the middle lounges, praying exaggeratedly, complete with the pastor hand-gestures, for the red solo cup in her hand to not be spiked with the Rohypnol drug, to make her friends crack up. They explode into guffaws, until that girl that looks like an anime character stops laughing.

"Wait, what's Rohypnol?" she asks.

  
_The date-rape drug_ , Joshua says to himself. At least after years of reading up on med chem, thinking he could do it, he could remember this.  _Once upon a time, i was good at it. Look at me now._ Ugh. He sucks at studying. Joshuae downs another three shots to drown his sorrows. He stares in Jisoo's general direction with so much pent-up frustration, he'd probably be able to pulverise her and everyone within a 10-mile radius. And almost like she feels him burning a hole through her body, she looks back with a steely gaze.

 

Usually, he'd look away. Today,  _he doesn't fucking care. He doesn't fucking want to talk about God. He's not the easily-happy, virginal Hong Jisoo from the past anymore._  


Joshua makes sure Jisoo's looking. He grabs the waist of the girl next to him and pulls her close to his body.

"Hey, what's your name? Don't think i've ever seen you around. Although, yeah, I've seen you looking at me."

She laughs coquettishly, putting an arm around his neck. "Seolhyun. I'm don't attend your uni, probably. And yeah, I wasn't trying to be discreet."

Joshua gratifies the conversation with an obligatory laugh.  "Nice dress," he says as he watches Myungeun unknowingly drag Jisoo and friends closer to his general area. Awesome.

Seolhyun 'accidentally' trips (at this point he suspects it's on purpose) and manages to press her chest against his. "I know."

"Can I talk you out of it?" Joshua smirks, purposely projecting his voice louder so that Jisoo would hear.  _Take that._  


"With a face like yours, I wouldn't refuse," she says. "However, your face could look even better."

He smiles winningly. "Oh, tell me."

"It'd look better... if i sat on it."  _Well that was forward._  Jisoo grimaces and turns back to her conversation. Joshua can hardly catch a breath as the Seolhyun girl grabs his wrist and drags him away from the crowd, towards the bathrooms.

 

 

 

 

Seo Jisoo sometimes gets dragged to parties by her friends. She's street smart, and yet, not the lonely girl that sits by the bar, trying to chat up the nerdy bartender with a mid-life crisis too huge for a 23 year old. She's not the one you see huddled up in less than hygenic bathrooms with a horny college guy's tongue in her mouth; she's the loud cheery girl that's facilitating a heated match of beer pong. always 200 percent sober, and filled to the brim with the lamest fucking jokes you'll ever hear from a SNU freshman.

 

And that's exactly what she's doing now. Myungeun has a phenomenal alcohol tolerance and is currently  _pwning_  a very shit-faced Mingyu at modified beer-pong. Jisoo's pretty sure the girls around would be rolling around laughing if they were sober, but as far as she's concerned, most people around this table are either as drunk as fuck or so drunk that they're up for fucking this version of Mingyu.

 

Whatever. Her phone is out, and she's taking as many compromising unglams that her SD-card will allow.

 

 

 

It's 3 am. Jisoo gives up on any hope of Mijoo or Myungeun rescuing her. Mijoo goes to parties just for the dancing, to outdo others (like she did with that Soonyoung guy earlier on). She places bets on dance battle, that girl doesn't ever kid. She probably went home with Soonyoung, conveniently forgetting about her existence.

For all Myungeun complains about nobody ever seeing her as a girl, Wonwoo is drunk cuddling a sleeping Myungeun, being surprisingly vanilla with everything. Just yesterday, he was proclaiming that Myungeun's the naggy sister he'd never wanted, pretending he didn't see the grimace on Myungeun's face.  _Why the fuk u lyinnnnnn,_  her mind sings.

 

It's about time she headed back to the dorms. It's a good thing she had Google mapped a public transport route out from Jeonghan's summer house back home. She doesn't really do parties, but  _thank God it's over!11!!!!!!!!1!!_  Dodging advances and shady stuff wasn't easy, and she had to physically stop herself from drinking more than half a glass of the Saku beer because  _what in the world it tasted so good?_   She didn't actually know that her own roommate, Jiyeon, had gone to the same party. But Jiyeon's a tiny little flower straight from a shoujo manga, and Jisoo would be lying if she didn't feel the immense need to protect her and act as her personal security guard for the whole night until she headed home with her own friends at one thirty. She'd seen Jeonghan stare at Jiyeon like he'd been personally enthralled by an angel of the Lord and it just didn't sit well with her.

 

Absentmindedly, she wonders what Joshua's doing now.  _Probably sleeping with someone else in some kind of post-orgasm bliss._  It's amazing, in a not really positive way, how he's changed. She still remembers him teaching her how to play the guitar back when they were sixteen, she still remembers how his eyes shone with passion and conviction.  _He probably doesn't remember, he taught others too._ She remembers him sharing his testimony and talking about being stupidly, wonderfully content in the Lord.  _And i was the hilariously flustered girl that teared-up and tried, and failed, to cover the tears with a snapback. And he probably doesn't remember me there either._  


 

Joshua Hong's now failing classes and not giving a single flying fuck. He's getting laid on a regular basis, he's sweet-talking girls into willingly peeling their layers, he doesn't even want to talk about Christianity. And he goes out of his way to avoid her, which is stupid because if he's afraid his little reputation would get ruined if she says a word, Jisoo would like it to be known that she's less than interested in tearing down his empire. However, does that make everything he'd done in the past fake? All the songs they'd sung together, all the small little good things he'd done, all the raw, unabashed smiles on his face, all the embarrassing bouts of breaking down in tears?

 

Those were sincere. She knew. And somewhere in him, it still exists, tucked away in a little box labeled 'not cool enough for skool'.

 

But for now? She'll just pray for him. He's pretty special, and Jisoo knows God isn't going to let him waste away. But it isn't her call. They're nothing to each other.

 

She heads to the bathroom to pee. The ride home is pretty goddamn long, and she doesn't want to risk anything. Jisoo enters the bathroom, pushing open cubicle doors to pick one just because she has the choice to, and there's the faint stench of vomit that contrasts greatly against the whole hotel restroom interior.  _Why of course, somebody had to get so drunk they had to regurgitate their remains. Totally should have expected that._  


 

What she truly doesn't expect, is a drunk guy slumped against the toilet wall of the cubicle at the far end. With vomit on his shirt. And a bloodied nose.  _In the fucking girl's toilet, okay then._  He doesn't look up, and she's mildly concerned.

 

"Hey there, you alive fam?"

The creature on the floor murmurs.

Jisoo is only slightly relieved. That bloody, scratch that, still heavily bleeding nose is a definite thing of concern. She kneels beside him to check the injury, and tilts his head up, only to discover that he's Joshua.

"Oh my god," she breathes.

 

He opens his eyes.

 

"Oh my god," he manages to gurgle. Jisoo stares with a mix of bewilderment and concern.

"I'm dreaming," Joshua says, smiling at the ceiling, "Seo Jisoo said "oh my god"!"

Jisoo wants to run away and hide. She settles for ignoring the accusation.

"Did somebody beat you up?" she asks.

And there, Joshua's eyes start filling up with tears.

 

"Wait," Jisoo grips his shoulders, "Really, did anyone beat you up? I'll call the police and punch them for you, okay? I know a bit of Aikido!"

He shakes his head drowsily.

"I'm just. A loser, you know?"

 

It gets too quiet.

"Anyway, get up. We gotta get out of here, you need to treat your nose." Jisoo turns around and gets up, her arm reaching for the door knob.

He grabs her hand.

Joshua sits on the ground, peering at her with puppy eyes. "Don't leave me."

 

"Relax, Joshua. I'm a good Samaritan."

Joshua's grasp on her hands tightens.

 

She doesn't have time to deal with this and feel  _weird,_  so she pulls him up. Or tries to. It doesn't help when he's a drunken, unstable mess. When Joshua finally stands on his two feet, he does so for three splendid seconds and stumbles again. She catches him by the waist, and he leans against her so much that she almost trips herself.

It's too close for comfort.

He dumps his head upon her shoulders. Jisoo can feel the blood trickling down her collarbone, and it's gross, honestly. "Josh, if you keep bleeding on me, we're going to look like serial killers."

"Hmph"

"Let's walk alright?" she suggests weakly. They're barely out of the living room, and she's practically dragged him all the way there.

There's no response.

"Joshua?"

Even breathing and soft exhales tickle the side of her neck.

"Are you kidding me?"

 

The part time bartender laughs at her as he watches, cleaning wine glasses.

 

"Joshua Hong, are you actually sleeping on me?"

 

With a shit ton of pure struggle, they're out of the complex. Jisoo is already 200% done with manhandling Joshua Hong.

"Can you at least make an effort?" she huffs. It's not that she wants to talk, but Joshua's putting his whole body weight on her back, arms circling lazily around her waist, ready to fall asleep every three seconds. Somebody has to keep him awake. "And stop hugging me."

"But... God said to hold fast to what's good..." He says.

"What?"

"1 t-t-Thesselonians 5:21..."

"I thought you're done with God?"

"oF COURSE! I HATE HIM!" Joshua wails and sinks to the ground, almost pulling her down with him. "HE MAKES ME SU-FFO-CA-TED. ALL THOSE RULES. HE MAKES EVERYONE SO FUCKING HAPPY b-b-but, how about me? Huh? I'm sick and tired of arguing with Him, i can't ever win!"

 

Jisoo, in the right frame of mind, would tell him to tone the fuck down because it's late, and to get up so that they'd be able to trudge four more blocks to the nearest possible bus stop. Unfortunately, she isn't, so she just sits down next to him on the bare concrete pavement, rubbing circles on the small of his back.

 

"They told me life was better without restraining yourself. And yeah, it's fucking great, you know? Suddenly you're like in control! Jisoo, have you felt like that before? You probably haven't, god, i forgot who i was talking to."

She shrugs her shoulders. "I'm only human."

"But like, i wanted to prove to God that i'd enjoy life better without his fucking supervision. I'm  _grown_. All those free-thinkers and atheists and people who don't give a fuck, don't you think in theory, they'd feel more free? They always look like they're on top of everything."

"Joshua, the grass is always greener on the other side-"

"-But so i thought,  maybe i'd finally get my chance in uni, like as a big fuck-you to Jesus; i'll just pretend he doesn't exists, and i'd do even better. I'd have more fun, more friends, have a successful Med Chem career and leave the whole church thing behind."

Jisoo puts an arm around him and Joshua furiously combs through his hair and brings his fringe to cover his eyes. "I thought i'd be happy... but i'm just... fucking up."

It's dark, and it's his weak attempt to not let her see him break. She feels his shoulders shudder as the tears come anyway. He can't seem to stop, and it's absolutely mortifying at this point. Somewhere, in an abandoned corner of Joshua's mind, he reckons that he'd probably die of shame there and then if he was just a little less drunk. But he's drunk off his rockers, so the thought is promptly shoved away under the category of "Not Applicable".

 

As he sniffles, both mucus and blood clog up his nose and other than it being extremely gross, Joshua's gut is already having reflux parties, and thus at this particular overwhelming sensation, Joshua's plagued with the godly urge  to empty out his entire digestive system into the roadside drain. He quickly breaks from Jisoo to do exactly that.

 

"That's nasty," she comments with zero spite in her voice. Her dress is stained with his blood, and her chest reeks of his vomit. Yet, she hasn't run away from him.

"Your dress... he begins. He actually feels  a twinge of remorse.

"My dress... is nice. And no, you can't talk me out of it. We gotta start walking to the bus stop okay?"

"i don't want to... it hurts so much..."

 

Jisoo doesn't know if he's talking about his nose, his gut, his mind or his pride, but  _her_ heart clenches anyway. "We have four more blocks, and it's three-thirty. I don't have cab money, i'm sorry. We gotta go now, alright?"

He grabs onto her ankle. At this point, Joshua isn't really in the mood to pick up after his shameless acts, so it seems pretty reasonable when he looks into Jisoo's eyes and says, " _Carry me._ "

"Are you serious?" Her eyes widen in exasperation. Although in floorball training they've done strength exercises and she's carried Seungcheol as she hikes along the perimeter of their university, she can't deny that she's pretty damn exhausted too.

"Even more serious than your faith in Christ," he proclaims.

"You know, Jesus caused the lame to walk. You know you can."

"But I'm not lame!" he protests.

Jisoo scoffs. "Look me in the eye and tell me what you said about 1 Thesselonians 5:21 wasn't lame."

Joshua shakes his head. "I don't even want to go back. I'm just going to ruin more things, hurt more people... "

She bends down to push his soiled bangs out of his eyes. "Do you want to stop?"

"I.. I can't. I'm not like you."

"We're all sinners, Joshua. I'm not any better than you are. You know what?" Jisoo says, pulling Joshua up. "Jump on."

"What?"

"I'll piggyback you to the bus stop."

"Are you serious?"

"Well, I might drop you down a ravine if I slip. Wanna take the chance?"

"Whatever," he huffs, and jumps onto Jisoo's tiny back.

 

 

 

 

"Are you going to break?" Joshua asks. They've successfully jay-walked across two streets. Seoul is pretty breath-taking at night.

"What if I do? Would you carry me instead?" 

Joshua laughs hollowly. "Usually, i'd say yes. After today, I doubt my level of like, smooth-ness."

"Why?"

"Shit happened tonight."

"Do you wanna talk about it?" she asks quietly.

"Nah."

She doesn't press further.

 

 

When they board the midnight bus back, Joshua forgets where he put his wallet and freaks out, causing Jisoo to pull out her own change to escape the the bus driver's sneer.

Once they're seated at the back of the bus, Joshua yelps.

"What happened?"

"I think i sat on something." There's nothing there.

Joshua looks at her sheepishly. "My wallet.. it's in my backpocket."

"I ain't even mad," she says as her fingers curl around the bus handle till her knuckle turns white and unclenches again, as she exhales.  _It's just 2000 won._  


It's raining outside and Joshua draws random chemicals in skeletal formula against the window pane to distract himself from the pressing urge to retch. Next to him, Jisoo's eyes start to flutter shut and he has half the mind to wake her up, because it's her that knows where to stop.

 

He just draws the structural formula of strawberry aldehyde and tries to forget what happened in that bathroom.

 

"Hong Jisoo..." Jisoo says, her eyes half-lidded with sleep. "Do you still hate me?"

"No one calls me that anymore."

"Tell me, though. Why you can't stand me. I'm not interested in dissolving your popularity," she says tiredly, tired, not as much as from the lack of sleep but rather, from being emotionally drained.

Joshua makes a frustrated noise at the back of his throat. "Sometimes, i think i hate you, you know?... I hate how you're happy and in church.. I hate how the theology professor hates you... but even he can't deny that your essays are like, top-notch. Fucking hell. It got an award in that external competition."

"You noticed?"

"Yeah.  _Religious Manipulation - Every Empire's Secret Weapon._ About how rulers distort various religions to control the masses."

"Thanks for the backhanded compliment? I guess?"

 

Joshua stares ahead, defeated. "When I look at you it's like you're everything I used to be."

 

Jisoo gapes at him as the wave of understanding sweeps over her and really, she has nothing to reply him with.

 

 

Joshua doesn't exactly wake up so she drags him out of the bus and carries him on the back to the dorms.  _The things I'm doing for you...man._  Absentmindedly, she wonders why Joshua feels so much heavier than Seungcheol while she piggybacks him, but perhaps it's merely her poor back telling her to check for early osteoporosis due to over-added pressure.

 

When they reach the lift lobby, she lets him down and shakes him awake. "What's your room number?"

"706. I didn't bring my keys."

"Is your roommate in your dorm?"

"My roommate," he spits, "is Wonwoo."

_Great._

At this point, Joshua's reached a whole different level of drunkedness. He's not saying any thing, but he's  _extremely_  touchy and giggly. Right now, he's leaning against the wall outside her room and laughing as he hiccups. Jisoo, meanwhile, fumbles with her keys and experiences mini-panic attacks with every hiccup Joshua has, because of her internalized fear of him vomiting all over the common corridor.

 

He has his hands wrapped around her stomach, humming something indistinct as they enter, and Jiyeon stirs in her sleep from her bed in the other corner of the room.  _Shit, I'll explain in the morning._ When she gets to her bed, she tugs his hands away and lays him there.

Joshua Hong better be glad that she has a heart of gold and is able to stand pretty disgusting things. He's already snoring as she takes off his shoes and  _god, i want to sleep too._  


Maybe it's her whole inexperience in dealing with, well, bringing injured, drunk guys home, or maybe because she's highly exasperated and sleep deprived and it's 5:30 am in the morning, that has her Googling "first aid broken nose". Jisoo gives him Tylenol and wraps a cold compress around an icepack and puts it on his nose for 15 to 20 minutes, as instructed by [www.healthline.com,](http://www.healthline.com,/) but the stench of vomit on Joshua's dress shirt comes right up her nose. 

She imagines sleeping in that must suck. And as much as she wants to free him from this suffering, it means one thing. 

It's easy, really.

_You just have to take off his shirt._

She rolls her eyes and pep-talks herself into doing it, because  _if I brought the two of us through that two hours of trial and tribulations, i can open the buttons of this offfending shirt._  


When she pops open the second button it reveals a very, very nice set of collar bones. Being Christian never meant that she was any less tempted.  _He's the same guy that dissed you in the cafeteria, Seo Jisoo._ She works her way down quickly and takes it off his torso, running to the bathroom to soak the shirt.

 

That was close. She scrubs off the dried vomit on his shirt, ignoring the heat in her cheeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When she's finally done doing the Lord's work, she doesn't even gripe about how Joshua's splayed across her whole bed. 

Jisoo falls asleep on the floor unceremoniously, in the midst of praying for Joshua's nose to be okay, only to wake up to obnoxious screech of the eight-thirty alarm for her morning theology class.

 

Such, is life.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> joshua wakes up, and jisoo takes the fall.  
> no one expects shit to hit the fan like this. 
> 
>  
> 
> (gfriend characters at the start of chapter, yall don't rlly need to know but lmao enjoy!!! i know its super late and i apologize)

 

The Notebook plays in the background at four forty-five in the morning, when one of the girls in room 811 start to cry. The others are pretending not to.

"OH MY GOD, EUNHA IS CRYING!" Yuju proclaims and furiously dabs at the droplets on her cheeks( _what? she was sweating)._

"Yasssssssss," Sowon cheers, and sniffles.

"Fuck all of you lizards," Eunha grumbles and waggles an accusing finger at Yerin. "Bitch, I see tears in your eyes. You lost too."

Yerin tosses her hair over her shoulder. "Those are tears of laughter, you shit. Stop dodging your punishment and get us all milk tea."

 

Eunha murmurs sinisterly as she trudges out of the room and towards the 24-hour minimart. She can't believe she was the first to cry; she swears they teared up.

 

She swears to get back at Yuju one way or another. Maybe she'll trip her in front Mingyu. Maybe then Mingyu would get the message that Yuju's fallen pretty hard for him, but then again, so has half of the whole female population in Seoul National University.

Yerin is a little shit that has to step up her game too. Eunha's in the midst of carrying back the plastic cups of drinks and plotting a matchmaking session between her and Jeonghan, when she sees something from the end of the corridor that causes her to drop everything at once - the ideas, the drinks, and her jaw.

 

_Is this real?_

 

College God of Sex, Joshua Hong, sits outside of Committed Christian 101 Seo Jisoo's dorm room laughing aimlessly.

 

Jisoo struggles with the lock outside the dorm and tells Joshua something that sounds like, "We can't be too loud, please at least  _try_ " and Eunha cannot believe what she's seeing.

_Seo Jisoo is initiating sex with Joshua Hong, who just dissed her in the cafeteria this afternoon, and they're willing??? And Joshua's going along with this inexperienced little "godly" girl?_

The milk tea spills from one of the cracked-open cups on the floor, and Yuju belatedly realises it only after she sees Joshua back hugging her as they go into the room and slam the door shut.

 

 _What the actual fuck,_ Eunha sort of seethes as she tries to clean up the mess with limited tissue paper. She doesn't know if she's irritated because she's always wanted to have a one night stand with Joshua(god, even his english name is hot) or that she has to go thru this shit at 5am but she eventually gives up, running to her own dorm room to spill the actual tea.

 

"GUYS."

"Why are you panting? And why is my milk tea gone?" Yuju accuses, "Did you drink it yourself?"

"Shut up, I don't have time for this. You won't  _believe_ what I just saw."

 

 

________________ 

 

_It’s like his heart wants to explode out of his chest as he stares ahead and stops drawing on the bus’s window panes. "When I look at you it's like you're everything I used to be," He heaves. He doesn’t know why he’s saying it, and he’d always wanted to avoid the topic like the plague, but not tonight. Somehow he’s brave enough to get it off his chest._

_The girl beside him goes silent, her eyes looking down only to search his face a minute after he’s said the words._

_Jisoo’s facial expressions don’t betray anything, but even in his failing eyesight and hazed mind, he feels it. It’s the profound feeling that somebody else understands how shitty things turned out, and it’s not negative, per se._

_Darkness overwhelms Joshua’s vision, and he sort of stirs again later on. This time, he’s on the street… and on someone. The wind is chilly against his damp clothes, and, ugh, there’s hair in his mouth. He’s not sure who it is, but his eyelids feel heavy, and Joshua tightens his leg grip on the stranger’s sides, falling back into darkness to the steady rhythm of the stranger’s pants and strides._

 

Joshua wakes up with a migraine that makes him want to headbang against every solid surface while Metallica plays in the background. _I’m safe, it was just a dream,_ Joshua pants as he recalls the vivid snapshots in his brain, an alternate reality where he’d drunk-talked to Seo Jisoo and made her carry his ass all the way back to the dorms. It’s weird how it all rushes back to him; even the mortifying bits about his accident in the bathroom with a girl called Seolhyun. Usually his dreams would slip through his fingers as he’d try his best to grasp onto the dying embers of virtual reality, but god, every little snippet of the dream was tangible.

 

_What a fucking nightmare._

He tries his best to assist himself up into a sitting position, and there’s that dull ache somewhere in his face that gets sharper and sharper with every breath. Joshua’s vision is blurry, and gradually it tries to focus on anything possible… but there’s something fluorescent right smack in the middle of his face.

 

He claws at it, and the _sting_ that pulses through from the tip of his nose to the opposing ends of his cheek is enough to make him cry. His nose, it hurts so much.

 

Reaching to pry the thing off his face, he touches the bridge of his nose too and feels a layer of gauze over his skin and brings the thing closer in his line of eyesight for inspection.

 

It’s a green post-it _. “if u missed the 8am alarm, tbh I would have too if I was in ur sorry state”_ it says in foreign handwriting.

Joshua is extremely confused. He scrambles up, ignoring the prodding headache and looks to the clock at the wall perpendicular to the beds… _wait, I don’t usually have a clock there._ It’s 10:45a.m., and there’s a bible verse hanging on the wall right next to it.

_Oh boy._

He’s not wearing a shirt, and just as he wonders what kind of fucking one night stand he had, there’s another post-it on the bed drawers next to him.

_“that doesn’t mean u can sleep tho. sry I booked an appt w/ the nurse to check for collateral damage in ur nose at 11am, was the only spot left”_

There’s a creeping feeling that arises from the depths of his abdomen, and when coupled with the fact that his gut is absolute shit at handling hangovers, everything just makes him feel sick to the stomach.

 

He dashes to the bathroom, and promptly pukes into the toilet bowl. It brings back an awfully fresh vision of him knocking his head and bruising his nose against the edge of the toilet bowl in his dream, and he can’t seem to shake it off as he rinses his mouth in the sink. By now, he knows that this dorm isn’t his, it belongs to two girls, and they’re both not here.

And that he missed theology lecture.

And that his nose is fucked up in an eerily similar way from the nightmare he’d dreamt last night. Speaking of last night… _where the hell was I last night?_

Right. There was a party.

And he remembers glaring at Jisoo, he remembers being triumphant, but he doesn’t remember why he was exactly, when he was whisked away by another girl, and Jisoo had sighed resignedly. And that other girl was…

_Shit._

Joshua looks himself in the mirror as paranoia seeps in.

_Impossible._

This time, a neon yellow post-it sticks to the mirror and Joshua peels it off. In the same handwriting, it reads, _“ur t-shirt’s hanging to dry @window. bc it’s gross. u can wear the floorball sch team sweater tho, it’s on the table!”_

 

He goes to the table and his mind just rejects everything in the name of coherence. _It can’t be._

It’s the same sweater that Seungcheol wears, and on top of the hood, surprise surprise, there’s yet another cluster of post-its.

 

 _“i mean, at least its unisex?”_ The first one says, and he’d laugh if he wasn’t close to tears now.

 _“there’s also coffee on the counter?? if u drink it”_ the second one says and it’s followed by a third.

_“and don’t touch jiyeon’s stuff!!!”_

There’s a stack of tutorials on the table, and Joshua confirms his worst fears as he sees the name on top of the file.

 

“Property of Seo Jisoo.”

 

Everything that happened last night rushes back in crystal clarity, in chronological order, and he wonders how he’s gonna have the strength to live today, knowing that the person he’d irrationally hated was the very one who saved his sorry ass.

 

 

 

It’s not very easy to look inconspicuous when your already well-known status somehow skyrockets into gossip-level popularity overnight.

 

The girls around him launch into whispers of “Jisoo’s so fake, I can’t believe it,” the moment he passes by and he can’t help but wonder who exactly they’re talking about.

 

 _Whatever._ He’s late for the appointment at the college infirmary, and he doesn’t have time for this.

 

 

 

Halfway through inspecting his nasal passages for any serious injury, somebody bursts into the room, panting and with anxious steps, skitters to a halt in front of the nurse.

“Hello, you’re Miss Seo, right? It’s a good thing you tried to subdue the wound, Mr. Hong’s actually lost a pretty significant amount of blood for a nose injury.”

Jisoo sits in the chair next to him. “My first-aid skills were really limited though, sorry.”

 

The nurse laughs as she assures Jisoo that her skills were fine. “I’m curious though, how did he get this wound? Gangfight?”

Joshua’s eyes widen from where he is, and Jisoo turns to him. He shakes his head.

“Accident,” he manages to say as the nurse sticks a light of sorts into his right nostril.

 

When they’re done, he gets to finally look her in the eye, and if Joshua had expected her to come up with a smug remark, he certainly doesn’t now.

Not only does she look tired as fuck, her face is pale and it just looks so wrong. The hilarious, genius Geophysics major that looks like a literal angel when she’s singing in the youth choir is looking this _down,_ and he knows something is up.

 

“Well, at least it wasn’t a serious fracture,” she jokes, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes, “I guess you’ll still have the face to attract them chicks.”

 

“Thanks,” he says sheepishly. Her sweater is tight around his biceps and back, but he supposes it doesn’t look half bad. “Thanks” doesn’t nearly encompass all he wants to say, but it’s the only word that makes it out of his tongue.

 

She bites on her lip. “I suppose it was worth it.”

 

Before she steps out of the room,  Jisoo turns back and sighs through the opening of the door.

“Try not to listen to what others are saying right now, alright? We both know nothing happened.”

 

And like this, she leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Bro, you’re the real MVP,” a guy Joshua doesn’t know comes up to him as he walks to the cafeteria and slaps his back. The rest of his crew cheers rowdily. “….always knew them good girls were bad girls in bed….” He barely manages to catch the end what one of them said, the phrase hanging in the pregnant air.

 

He doesn’t even have a chance to ask them what it meant.

 

Joshua trudges along to their usual table, his mind still highly befuddled.

“Ayyy, what’s up with your nose?” Junhui asks when he sees it wrapped in bandage.

Joshua doesn’t know how to answer this, so he shrugs.

There’s a suspicious twinkle in Junhui’s eyes and he smirks. “Oh, I think I know what happened.”

Joshua sips his coffee, hoping desperately that Junhui didn’t see him get injured last night.

Junhui beckons him to come closer.

“What?” Joshua grits impatiently.

“So, Jisoo’s rough in bed?” Junhui stage-whispers, and Joshua splutters, his mouth full of coffee. “What the _fuck?”_

He stands up, the chair falling down as he kicks it away. From his peripheral vision, he sees Seungcheol storming towards him.

 

An angry Seungcheol is an extremely rare phenomenon that comes out like, 0.1 times in a year, but when it does, it’s more than a force to be reckoned with.

 

Joshua’s paralyzed in his spot as Seungcheol grabs his arm. “Let’s talk outside, shall we?”

 

Once they’re out of the cafeteria and away from the prying eyes of everyone else, Seungcheol grabs Joshua by the collar. “You’d better tell me what fucking happened between you and Jisoo last night.”

 

“I… I,” Joshua stammers, and today it looks like the college’s sweet-talker has finally run out of words.

 

“People are saying that she _dragged_ you back to the dorm and you fucked her in her dorm.”

His jaw drops.

“And I know that Jisoo’s above that, and she said nothing happened, but I need to hear it from you,” Seungcheol says, trying his level best to keep his voice even.

 

Suddenly he understands what those guys in the corridor meant, and his own fist shakes in anger. “Nothing happened, I was drunk and she brought me back!”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah-I-uh, she carried me back to the dorms and I didn’t have my keys! I passed out there, how would anyone know about us doing anything like _that_?” Joshua admits and it’s not even embarrassing now.

“Eunha and her friends apparently saw it go down in the corridor and now everyone thinks of Jisoo as some kind of undercover slut. Are you happy now, Joshua Hong? Is your irrational hate for her, like, leaping in joy?”

 

Joshua swallows and it’s not like he could say much against that. He had been a certified asshole the whole term, and instead of her tarnishing his pathetic image, he’s fucked up everything for her.

 

The guilt bubbles horribly in his chest and Seungcheol huffs in frustration.

 

“I’m sorry,” Joshua says.

“Don’t say that to me. You know who needs to hear that more,” Seungcheol spits. “Jisoo’s been having a _hell_ of a morning, and I don’t think you’ll even understand how much unwarranted flak she’s getting from people just because she was a goddamn _angel_ to you.”

 

Seungcheol leaves him at that and goes back to the cafeteria. Joshua sinks down to the floor, his back against the lockers as everything suffocates him into a haze of plagued conscience.

 

 

It’s 11pm, and Joshua’s just finished showering at the sports complex after football training. His coach had ignored his nose fracture and the big gash across it. He had subjected him to the same rigorous training, justifying that “we play football with our legs, not our face”.

 

He walks back to the dorms and the rest of the sports complex is bathed in darkness, save for the lone indoor floodlight shining down in the floorball court. As he gets closer, he hears the quick, sharp squeaks of sneakers against court ground and the characteristic hard tap of the floorball hitting the wall and back.

 

Jisoo runs up and down the court, bathed in sweat as she dribbles around cones and with a swift sweeping motion, hits the ball into the net. She then picks it up again, dodges the cones and gets to the other side, shooting it into the goal post again. He watches as she rinses and repeat everything from the top – he’s stood there for close to ten minutes, but she hasn’t even noticed.

 

He wants to say so many things. But he wants to laugh at how pathetic he’s being; Joshua runs back to Seungcheol’s dorm, and runs away from his problems yet again.

 

 

Two hours in, and after he finishes copying Myungeun’s notes in Seungcheol’s room, he feels a prompting in his heart that he hasn’t heard ever since he stopped talking to God. And this time, Joshua knows that he can’t fight it anymore.

It’s 1am, and he takes the stairs up to the familiar corridor leading to Jisoo’s room, knocking at the door.

 

She has every right to slap him to the ends of hell just based on that fact that he wants to talk to her at this hour. But she opens the door anyway.

 

Jisoo looks at him, puzzled.

“I-I-Is it, uh, too late now to say sorry?” Joshua asks, leaning against the door frame.

She gives him a tired smirk. “Are you missing more than just my body?” Jisoo scans the whole corridor for potential threats before allowing Joshua in, shutting the door.

 

“I didn’t actually mean for it to sound like a Justin Bieber song, but I’m really just. I, I’ve given you so many burdens that you don’t deserve.”

Jisoo shrugs.

“I’m usually better with words but… yeah. You took the fall and I really had no idea it would turn out like this.”

“Neither did I.”

 

 

They fall into silence, that’s only broken when Jisoo gets his now-dry shirt and throws it to him.

“Hey, Jesus forgives. Guess I should,” Jisoo says, finally.

Joshua marvels at her sheer generosity and wonders if she’s joking.

“You’d better get back soon. I don’t really crave anyone else spreading unfounded rumors of our Scandalous Escapades Episode Two.” She sighs and shows him out. He can't help but notice her reddened eyes and knuckles, white from clenching over and over again.

“Jisoo, I know things are hell right now, and we’ll try to kill the rumours alright? You’re incredibly strong and I don’t know how you do it.”

She laughs, and it's so painfully empty, void of life. “I was honestly pretty horrified this morning, but I prayed? Then Seungcheol came and shut everyone up in lecture so I pretty much attempted to ignore it all. It’s a temporary defense mechanism, but I guess we all make do, don’t we?”

 

 

He looks into her eyes and he knows she’s trying her best to not break. “I guess we do.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jisoo wants to stand up for herself, but runs into everything she's never wanted.  
> joshua wants to stand up for somebody else other than himself, for the first time in a long time.

 

 

The door shuts behind Jisoo and she has to physically tame the paranoia that jumps at the opportunity to scream at her psyche; _Someone’s going to see! Tomorrow you’ll wake up, and they’ll say you guys did it again! Seo Jisoo, you fucking moron; did you really suggest forgiving that bastard, you’re either a saint or plain stupid-_

Who is she kidding. Jisoo wants to hate Joshua so damn much.

Note: _wants to._ As she sinks into her bed, hair unabashedly damp from her shower and tunes out the sound of Joshua’s footsteps trailing away from her dorm along the corridor, she realises that for some reason, tonight, she can’t cry.

This is university, not high school. But the world was a blur today, as it will be the next day and the days after following her virtual Armageddon the night she brought Joshua back to the same bed she lies on now. She’s locked into an emotional locker by people who know nothing but will play along for personal agendas, she’s been slut-shamed for being kind – wait scratch that, for being _human._ She’s been generalized as a person that goes against her personal morals, and oh golly, she’s become infamous in a span of less than 24 hours.

Who said uni students were more mature? It’s all the same.

But you know what’s the worst part of it all? She can’t bring herself to pour the blame on Joshua Hong, she tells herself it was the timing, it was a collective bunch of ambiguous factors that were triggered by a catalyst that saw her going into the room with him, a catalyst called Eunha, a catalyst that managed to single-handedly tear down her reputation in one day.

_It’s all factors and point of view, it’s like the decline of the Roman Empire, it’s just-_

Oh, all the justifying. Jisoo just wants to hate him so much, and she tells this to herself as her inner being knows it will never happen.

Humans want explantion. Humans want scapegoats.

Jisoo isn’t going to make Joshua her scapegoat, regardless of how _shitty_ he’s been in general. She doesn’t want this incident to define who she is. She wants it all to pass, and _wow I just sounded delirious._

Her arms wrap self-consciously around her body and she wills herself to sleep.

She prays.

The ticking of the wall clock pounds tirelessly against her eardrums, and she wills it away; she tries.

20 minutes pass and something from somewhere in her brain tells her to work on a mindmap about the geographical hazards of transform plate boundaries, and immediately, she gets up and does exactly that, in hopes of falling asleep from exhaustion after that.

Jisoo doesn’t.

“Maybe I should do the ‘pray then flip to a random page of the Bible for advice’ thing,” she says, and her tone is skeptical, because there are days when even a Christian doesn’t want to believe that God heals all wounds; it’s too good, too intangible to be true when you’re going through a shitstorm.

She closes her eyes and randomly, fingers a page and opens the book.

It’s James 1. Great.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds-” she reads, and wants to bang her head against something; anything. How is she supposed to count this all “joy”????? It’s hilarious, unbelievably hilarious.

“Was James high when he wrote this,” Jisoo gripes, and immediately feels remorse for saying so, but continues to shake her head and **sigh.**

**“It’s not going to work,” she tells herself as she settles back into bed, a sudden wave of fatigue crashing pleasantly over her.**

**Her last remembered thought before sleeping goes a little something like _I’ll try, anyway. Research shows that fake smiles reduce stress, whatever that means…_**  
  


 

Today she wears black jeans and a black hoodie and a mask and sunglasses in an attempt to be inconspicuous.

Jisoo only realises how ridiculous she looks when she sees her reflection in the glass panels of the Sociology block when she’s walking to class with Seungcheol. _It’s like I’m trying to be emo-scene for the first time but had no money for dramatic make-up. Or like I’m trying to rob a bank. Or both._ Beside her, Seungcheol sighs and his mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water – like he wants to say something but he can’t bring himself to.

He had insisted on bringing her to theo lecture today because of what happened the day before, and Jisoo is thankful because she’s pretty sick of hearing people ask “how did your religious prude ass find Joshua’s dick?” and the atheist club kids from Existential Philosophy shoving her into corners and telling her about how they always knew Christians were “fucking hypocrites”.

She nudges him. “You wanna say something?”

“Did Josh say.. anything to you?” he starts, sounding uncertain, sounding like there’s an underlying subduction mass of lava beneath his conflicted tectonic plate of a face, sounding like he’s trying to bottle anger into a shot glass.

“He pulled a Justin Bieber at my doorstep last night,” Jisoo says, trying to sound universally chill.

Seungcheol’s eyes shoot wide open, and he’s definitely not buying her version of _chill._ “He smoked marijuana and egged your place?”

“No! No, he, well, he apologized?”

“Oh,” he replies, but clenches his teeth as he tells Jisoo that he’d wring Joshua’s neck if he hadn’t. “Not like I don’t want to now, but. I don’t want to go to jail early,” Seungcheol explains, and follows up with a belated, crooked smile. Jisoo knows how to read him; it’s his attempt at cheering her up, and although she sees through it, it makes her feel better in a weird way that Seungcheol only can. Jisoo remembers last night’s bible verse – “Count it all joy” – and she reckons that she shouldn’t be frowning if she didn’t do jackshit that night other than the right thing, she’s not going to frown.

 

This doesn’t mean, however, that she’s ready to sit next to Joshua Hong in plain sight of almost everyone, three rows away from the front. Seungcheol drags her there, and _wow, great, hallelujah._

Even Joshua gapes as Seungcheol drags her there and he shifts his bag to give her space.

“And now,” Jisoo mutters as she shoots daggers towards Seungcheol, “People will think me and him are friends with benefits! How delightful of your decision, Choi Seungcheol.”

“Hey, we’re friends with benefits too. Educational benefits,” Seungcheol calls out, and Joshua’s somehow caught in the middle as the rest of the people in the lecture hall turn their heads towards the conversation at the mention of “Jisoo” and “friends with benefits”.

Joshua seems to notice this, and he shakes his head. “Fucking typical reactions, people are like sheep, herded by emotion,” he says.

“You know, you should try contemplating more on those analogies on herd mentality, you’re going to be a brilliant student if you map that out,” Jisoo suggests offhandedly as she drags out her tumbler of coffee and makes a face at Seungcheol mid-sentence.

“A brilliant student?” Joshua repeats, and beneath his tone of general disbelief there’s a hint of hope, and Jisoo almost wants to hug his dashed, self-condemned ambitions– metaphorically.

“Yeah, brilliant.”

He frowns in silence for a long time, internal battle evident through his eyebrows furrowing and moving apart in a way that’s hilarious, in a way that he doesn’t realise how funny his face looks, and eventually settles for a small smile that he thinks Jisoo doesn’t notice.

In which, she totally does.

 

 

After lecture, she’s sandwiched in between the both of them, and her mind chants an almost unhealthy mantra of “count it joy, count it joy, see that condescending look from the girl over there? Hear them whispering about me? Count it joy, count it joy,”

“Shit, man, why you still lyin’?” Some guys who Jisoo vaguely remembers as Wonho and Jooheon or something stops by in the corridor and nudges Joshua’s shoulder passive-aggressively. “Just say you fucked her, and then you can tell us all about it, no need to act noble.”

Jisoo immediately grabs Seungcheol’s arms to keep him from punching the guy’s mouth off his face.

Joshua denies it. Vehemently, but it’s not like they listen.

“What, do you have to act holy for her? What other reason for her being next to you exists other than wanting a second go at each other’s asses?”

Seungcheol’s fists go flying and Jisoo stops mumbling about counting things as joy under her breath and steps in between Wonho and Seungcheol, pushing the latter against the wall before dragging him away from the fight.

“Did you see that bastard’s face? God, I need to destroy it till plastic surgery’s a lost cause-”

“Seungcheol it’s fine, just, calm down, let’s go to Myungeun and she’ll find less law-breaking ways to kill people metaphorically, alright?”

“Jisoo, don’t you get it? Those girls who hate you, it’s because they want in on Joshua’s dick, and those guys who insult your religion, say shit to Joshua, say degrading things about you, it’s because they want in on y-”

“On?”

“Nevermind. I, I. Whatever. Let’s go catch another episode of ‘Wonwoo doesn’t even know he’s whipped for Myungeun’, alright?” Seungcheol assures.

Jisoo lets it go, and agrees.

 

 

She runs into Joshua again at lunch and somehow, he's now arguing with Junhui and Mingyu about  _that_  night while Seungcheol is away getting drinks.

“You sure you didn’t do anything? You don’t seem like the type to _not_ do anything!” Mingyu says.

Before Joshua has the time to respond to this, Mingyu’s whisked away by another “girlfriend of the week”.

“How could you _not_ do anything, anyway?” Junhui cries, still unable to wrap his head around the fact that Joshua drunked out like a pussy and that nothing exciting happened.

“Um, hello I’m here?” Jisoo shouts, standing up and slamming down her chopsticks. “Why won’t anyone believe me? Do I have to present a certificate of virginity for all of you people in this god forsaken cafeteria?”

The cafeteria is almost silent, save for the clanking of washing utensils. She can almost feel their eyes on her, and her mind screams that this is a _BAD IDEA BAD IDEA WHAT ARE YOU DOING_ but her words come out before rationalization does.

“So what if Joshua Hong has a track record of being insanely sexually active? Does it mean he has no morals? Does it mean _I_ have no self-control? Does it mean that he’s gonna behave the same way when he’s so drunk that I have to carry him from some frat party all the way to the dorm and pay for his bus fees? What if I’m not attractive to him, and vice versa? What if he hated me? Would he just _do it?_ I don’t think so. It’s not even a big paradigm shift. Speculations, you’re all spewing _shit_ because of speculations.”

Seungcheol  stops in his track with the drinks when he hears this and immediately sets them down on the table before he does anything irrational, and Jisoo is secretly relieved. The moment she sits down, she’s overcome with regret as the crowd launches into yet another haze of frenzied reactions.

“That’s feisty,” Junhui comments, clearly not getting her point, which causes Joshua to kick him under the table.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Jisoo confesses to Joshua, “Did you see all of them staring at me just now? It’s like I was going to get stoned or something.”

Joshua still sits in a semi-daze as he replays her, well, speech from just now in his mind. His only coherent thought is that _no, of course you’re not unattractive_ , which he doesn’t understand and _doesn’t want_ to understand.

“Jisoo,” he says suddenly, looking at his food and not at her, like he’s deep in thought and she naturally anticipates his potential words of insight.

“You… you put the “cute” in “persecuted”.”

She almost chokes on the coffee.

“What?”

“I said,” Joshua’s ears turning redder with each word, “you're being acutely persecuted."

Jisoo raises her eyebrows. Joshua runs off with the excuse of having to study -  _and when did he ever study?_

 

Jisoo’s bopping her head to some electro-house track that effectively drowns out her surroundings as she walks towards Seungcheol’s dorm.

She almost ends up knocking on the wrong door as the bass builds up, and when he opens the door, his mouth is opening and closing like a goldfish again-

_Oh wait, I still have my headphones on. Right._

“-and you kinda look like a hoodlum? With your jacket?” she catches the end of his phrase, and Jeonghan from somewhere inside the room shouts, “she looks like the Ku Klux Klan! you know, the darker, emo version?”

Jisoo hands over Seungcheol’s knee guard she had used for the past few weeks. “Anyway, I’m here to return this. Thanks man, my knee’s healing up now.”

“No prob. Get back safe!” Seungcheol says as he closes the door, and Jisoo just gives a scoff with no bite as she pulls the hood back on again.

 

She’s barely two steps out of the room when she bumps into a guy who smells like cheap beer.

“Chungsoo, look who we have here?” The guy who she bumps into grabs her by the shoulders and turns her body to faced the other guy.

She tugs desperately at her hood to cover her face, and tries to run away but his hands retain a vice-like grip on her.

“Oh shit, Sangjin, it’s the girl who wanted present a certificate of virginity for all of us!”

“Hello, Jisoo,” Sangjin crows, “how was Joshua? And now, Seungcheol?”

“She’s probably a dirty little slut, now that I see her true colors,” Chungsoo comments, but gets shushed by the other guy, and Jisoo wants to protest so badly but there’s nothing that comes out of her throat.

“Shhhh, give the girl the benefit of the doubt! Right, Jisoo?” Sangjin’s tone is laced with faux concern and it’s scaring her more than anything else. “We gotta let her prove it to us, right?”

Jisoo attempts to aim a back kick into Sangjin’s crotch but he grabs her thighs before she can, and the more she protests, his fingernails drive deeper crescents into her skin.

“It’s not like we can get any inspection done here in the corridor. You wanted to show us that you’re a virgin, right? We want to know the truth too. Your – what’s that god’s name – oh yeah, your Jesus guy gave us a vision, you know? We’ll even help you tell the rest of the college that you’re pure! Trust us.”

She’d be a fucking moron to trust them.

Her attempts to scream are short-lived as Chungsoo stuffs a towel into her mouth  - and is that the smelly towel they used to wipe their after-basketball sweat? – and the suffocation brings tears to her eyes, as they drag her into their dorm room.

She’s dumped resolutely one of the beds and JIsoo, when they aren’t looking, spits out the towel gag and tries to run to the door, but fails again when Chungsoo guards the door and pulls her back.

 

“Babe, be patient. We gotta set up the camera first, okay It’s my first time doing this, you know? Recording evidence. We need proof, remember? We’re all in this together,” Sangjin says, his voice perfectly even.

“I don’t get it. Stop trying to keep up the fucking act and be natural, the whole school knows you aren’t all that.” Chungsoo mutters and attempts to pull her hoodie off. It gets bunched up at her neck, and it almost chokes her but he uses brute force to pull it out anyway.

Jisoo screams to get help. They laugh, and it puzzles her and she screams again.

“So many girls are always here, being loud and having fun. People will just think you’re making the usual noise, you know?”

She’s wearing an old church camp tee that slips slightly off her shoulders, and she tries to curl into a defensive position but Chungsoo’s towering over her and he reeks of sweat and alcohol.

“Hey, stop struggling. Your shirt won’t help you look holier. You’d look better without it.”

Jisoo spits upwards at Chungsoo’s face. She expects him to punch her  - and that means she’d get a chance to roll out of his arms’ gridlock – but his face twists into a crooked smile.

“You’re such a bad girl, Jisoo,” she hears Sangjin say as he comes closer, “we’ll have to punish you.”

That’s her breaking point – bringing in overused BDSM tropes to make it look like she’s the willing one? At this point it doesn’t even matter that her knees are wobbly and there’s angry tears streaming down her cheeks; Jisoo kicks Chungsoo in the abdomen and dashes to the opposite end of the room.

It’s the window. It’s open, and she looks down.

_No, bad idea. It’s the seventh floor. Then they’ll make my death look like voluntary suicide-_

She’s backed up against the partially opened window as they get closer.

“You know you can’t run away unless we finish this. Fucking hell, Seo Jisoo, stop acting like you haven’t done it before!”

“But I _haven’t!”_

“Oh, then what _are_ you going to do about it?” Sangjin sneers, laughing loudly, menacingly. “Why don’t you ask your _God_ to save you? Does it not work anymore if you’ve been a naughty girl?”

Sangjin gets to her and presses her against the closed half of the windowsill and forces him self on her, full frontal. She can _feel_ the tent in her pants and it hits her harder that she’s not just running away from insults – they’re gonna _do_ things to her and _holy shit_ , she thinks, _god, send me an angel to prove them wrong and get me out of here_

_I just want to escape I just want to- but it’s too high up –_

Seo Jisoo is stuck between a window and a hard place and she wants to punch something as Sangjin tears at her shirt and Chungsoo monitors the video and she almost thinks it’s too late.

 

Joshua’s walking to Seungcheol’s room like he often does this few weeks to copy notes from Myungeun. And it’s not because he’s hardworking – he’s forced to by her and at this point it’s almost like she’s his college mom.

Just before Seungcheol lets him in after he’s knocked on the door, Joshua sees a familiar pair of Nike Airs going into the room next to Seungcheol’s – Room 708 – and they’re going in by the heels, backwards. It’s almost as if the person was dragged in, and it’s weird as fuck, but oh well.

“Oh, you’re finally here. Jisoo just left you know,” Seungcheol grins and offers him chips.

“She did?”

“Yeah, to return Seungcheol’s knee guard.” Myungeun explains and quickly beckons him to sit across her, shoving today’s notes at his chest.

Things go as per usual for around ten minutes – Jeonghan and Junhui watching pretentious French porn in the corner, Wonwoo calculating his weed-selling profits of the week whilst staring at him and Myungeun passive-aggresively, MIngyu rejecting another girl by text message, Seungcheol being a dad in general. Until they all hear someone scream from the room next to them.

Only Joshua reacts immediately, dropping the pen in his hand. “What the fuck was that?”

“Oh, Sangjin and Chungwoo live next to me and they’re always bringing random girls from out of college to their rooms, you know, “ Seungcheol sighs tiredly. “They’re fucking dirty but as long as they don’t give me shit, I just avoid them and roll with the punches. And all of the moans and shit.”

“Oh.” But to Joshua, he knew what moans sounded like, and this scream screamed “non-consensual” in every way.

For the next two minutes, it’s a tragically futile effort to get back to work. That’s when he hears it from their window -

_“Why don’t you ask your God to save you? Does it not work anymore if you’ve been a naughty girl?”_

His head is swirling as it all adds up – and he ignores the puzzled look on his friends’ faces as he gets up with curled fists and runs out of the dorm, not even bothering to close the door.

 

Room 708’s door opens and Chungwoo stands with a devious smirk at the door. Joshua sees the webcam set up and he doesn’t even want to see past him, _fuck._

“Oh, hey Joshua. Just in time to watch the show. You wanna share her-”

Joshua punches him in the face.

 

“-what the _FUCK WAS THAT FOR?”_

It doesn’t matter. Jisoo is trapped against Sangjin at the window and he aims another punch at his jaw, shoving Sangjin to the floor. Jisoo takes the chance to get out of his chokehold and run towards the door.

Sangjin and Chungwoo are getting up and they’re inching closer – great. He topples the webcam set up and crushes the memory card that slips out. There’s no time, no other way.

Chungwoo sprints towards Joshua in fury, shaking his fists and Joshua _runs,_ out of the door and slamming it close in Chungwoo’s face.

Hearing them struggling to open it, Joshua panics. Jisoo is outside Seungcheol’s door, shell-shocked and waiting for him to open up.

Joshua bangs on the door of 707 and, _wow, fucking finally._ He takes Jisoo’s hand and pulls her inside, just as he hears the doorknob twisting open in the room next to this.

 

 

Jisoo runs into the safety of Myungeun’s arms.

Joshua sinks against the opposite side of the door.

“What fucking happened?” Seungcheol growls. Jisoo digs her head into Myungeun shoulders.

“They tried to… fucking bastards…. Jisoo was, she-“ Joshua grits out and he can’t form coherent words. The fresh memory of seeing Jisoo in Sangjin’s arms and screaming burns itself in his mind and he’s repulsed to the nth degree. He doesn’t even know what to do, even if he has the right to scoop Jisoo into his arms like he wants to now as she sits at the bottom of the bed, clawing at her ripped shirt and fingering scratch marks at the side of her arms.

Seungcheol crouches next to her quickly, and Jisoo flinches but whimpers a soft “I’m alright”, and no one in the room buys it.

 _Sometimes you’re as much of a sex-crazed freak as they are, the only difference being that girls hurl themselves at you. Sometimes you’re aggressive too_ – his brain sets off an unpleasant explosive of self-questioning and he wants to bury his own mind. _You have no right in asking her if she’s alright, you’re trash like Chungwoo and Sangjin, do you think you’re redeemed in any way? You’re unredeemable, you’re damaged beyond repair, Joshua Hong._

_You’re ruining her life._

He runs out of the room, leaving the door opened and dashes down the stairs – it seems almost like a motif of sorts, him running away.

The difference is this; this time, he’s running away from his own thoughts, and it will follow him no matter where he goes. Always there, telling him that he’s fucked up and there’s no way back, no matter what he does.

 

Joshua doesn’t even realise that he’s run so far, he’s almost approaching the Life Science Observatory on the other side of campus.

He blames himself for everything, and in some way maybe he _was_ the catalyst. But seeing JIsoo almost get raped triggered something else in his mind – he doesn’t want to lose her, ever. Because people like Seo Jisoo should never have to face shit like this.

And this time, it all clicked. This time, he turns back and trudges back to the dorm.

_I’m not going to run away anymore. Not from her._


End file.
